protonscr

Steam Installer Requires permission changes to work

steamclosed Distro Family: UbuntuDistro Family: DebianDistro-provided steam package
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#5783 · opened 2018-09-24 by leo-petrucci · updated 2021-02-16 · 4 comments · github
Lleo-petrucci 2018-09-24 github

My system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): N/A
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Ubuntu 18.04.01 LTS
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: N/A
  • Have you checked for system updates?: N/A

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

While this isn't a huge problem and is easy to fix by users that know what they're doing, new Linux users might be confused by it. I suppose that since it's such a minor problem it hasn't been reported officially, or at least I was not able to find anything about it here.

When downloading the .deb Steam file from here and running it, the installer does not work. If started by double clicking, Ubuntu gives the following error:

steam could not setup steam data

If ran in terminal this is the output:

steam
Repairing installation, linking /home/leonardo/.steam/steam to /home/leonardo/.local/share/Steam
rm: cannot remove '/home/leonardo/.steam/steam': Is a directory
Setting up Steam content in /home/leonardo/.local/share/Steam
rm: cannot remove '/home/leonardo/.steam/steam': Is a directory

The current fix is changing permissions like so:

mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
rmdir ~/.steam/steam
ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
rm -rf ~/.steam/bin

This has been a bug since at least 2014, here's a bunch of people also having the same problem.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Download Steam from here
  2. Start Steam installation by running the downloaded file
Kkisak-valve maintainer 2018-09-24 github

Hello @lovemoebius, at some point the Ubuntu-provided steam package was run on your system. Ubuntu inherits its steam package from Debian and the Debian/Ubuntu provided steam package sets up a conflicting folder layout on first run of Steam.

Take this issue up with the Ubuntu or Debian package maintainer for steam.

Lleo-petrucci 2018-09-24 github

Hello @lovemoebius, at some point the Ubuntu-provided steam package was run on your system. Ubuntu inherits its steam package from Debian and the Debian/Ubuntu provided steam package sets up a conflicting folder layout on first run of Steam.

Take this issue up with the Ubuntu or Debian package maintainer for steam.

I did first install it from the Software Center and then uninstalled it to test something.
Nevermind I guess, thank you for the quick response

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2021-02-12 github

Hello @creativiii, are you still experiencing this issue on an up to date system?

This specific folder layout conflict should have been resolved in the Debian-modified Steam package 1.0.0.59-1 and made its way downstream to Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the version distributed by Ubuntu 18.04 is older than that.

Lleo-petrucci 2021-02-16 github

I haven't had problems since posting this so I assume it must be fixed! 😄

Nothing extracted yet.